
E 



Class. 
Book.. 

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COEHRJSHT DEPOSIT. 



THE LIFE & DEATH 
OF MRS TIDMUSS 



THE LIFE & DEATH 
OF MRS TIDMUSS 

AN EPIC OF INSIGNIFICANCE 
BY WILFRID BLAIR 




He hath put down the mighty from their 
seats, and exalted them of low degree. 
Whosoever therefore shall humble himself 
as this little child, the same is greatest in 
the Kingdom of Heaven. 

Blessed are ye poor. 



D. APPLETON AND COMPANY 

NEW YORK : : : : MCMXXIII 






COPYRIGHT, 1923, BY 

D. APPLETON AND COMPANY 



PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA 



JUN 16 *23 

©C1A704S85 



x 



TO 

MY MOTHER 



FOREWORD 

The book might be titled, as every other book might 
be titled: 

"Waste." 

The poem shakes us with the accusation that we are 
accustomed to turn both simple and sensitized beings 
into living clay. Here the terrible transformation takes 
place stanza by stanza in the events of a routine which 
we accept. There is no degradation which we will offi- 
cially admit. There is childhood, girlhood, womanhood, 
wifehood, motherhood. But its other names are, after 
childhood, four phases of living clay, and then death. The 
poem celebrates the ruin of no great potentiality; it cele- 
brates merely something pitiful and joyous and wistful, 
slowly rotted by a routine which we not only accept but 
glorify. It is the immemorial waste of womankind, and 
so of mankind. It is the infinite daily murder. 

Zona Gale 



CONTENTS 




Foreword 


page 7 


Part I Childhood 


IO 


II Maidenhood 


18 


III Motherhood 


30 


IV Middle Age 


42 


V Old Age 


58 



THE LIFE & DEATH OF MRS TIDMUSS 
PART I. CHILDHOOD 

MY darling is so young 
Her eyes are yet star-smitten 
As though their gaze yet hung 
Where late her soul was litten. 

Such gold is in her hair 
She has, you see, just wended 
From God's wide nursery where 
His babes are sunshine-blended. 

So softly, purely glows 

Her face, earth has not smutched it 

Since the essential rose 

In some far silence touched it. 

What can I but repeat 
The vow of every mother — 
There is not one so sweet 
In all the world — none other! 

Sleep now, my own, my own: 
Lie still where I have laid you. 
(Ah, God, when you have grown 
Other than God first made you!) 

The bird-sung morning blue 
Rapturously shall wake you t 
And each dear thing you do 
Then busily retake you. 



10 



CHILDHOOD ii 

i 

WHAT the unknown and immaterial womb 
Whence we awhile round the small fire of Earth 
Come huddling, worlds us in; and to what tomb 
We are forthtaken. Between death and birth 
Lie all that we dare certainly call life — 
Love, effort, greed, fear, courage, pain, and mirth. — 

1 1 
Why their confused, uncomprehended strife? 
Is the clutch'd creed that life shall not be ended 
Truth or fierce craving ? Yet with drum and fife 
Life and endeavour are not less attended, 
Though death be death, and in themselves — the high'st 
Alike with the most trivial — yet are splendid. 

in 
Therefore, let be ! Whether the moral tryst 
Man strives to keep be set by any God, — 
Whether men follow Mahomet, Buddha, Christ, 
And they be dead or live, — we plod and plod, 
Eternally, inevitably taught 
To know the rein, to feel reward or rod. 

IV 

SI M P S O N, a smart young fellow, who had bought 
A small greengrocery in Willinghame, 
Married Kate Wilkes : good stroke all round, he thought, 
For she was brisk at business, and the same 
At motherhood. She bore him three stout sons, 
And last of all little Selina came. 

V 
Her earliest memory was Sally Lunns. — 
"Your Gran'ma used to give me pennies, dear, 
And always warned me, 'Little gels as runs 
Across the road without they see it's clear 
Gets knocked down, 'Leena.' So I needn't say, 
I never crossed when any carts were near. 



ia MRS TIDMUSS 

VI 

"I got the Sally Lunns across the way. — 

Isn't it funny that's the earliest thing 

As I remember ? It's as clear as day . . . 

Why, I can almost hear the kettle sing 

After I'd climbed the stairs and passed the turn 

Just where your Uncle Bob would hide and spring. 

VII 

"How he did frighten me ! I couldn't learn 
To take it all in fun. I used to cry . . . 
I was so careful not to let them burn — 
The Sally Lunns, I mean. Ma let me try 
To butter them — but that I couldn't do. 
How I remember it! How time does fly!" 

VIII 

And there were other early memories too : 
Greens and potatoes in the small dark shop, — 
The errand boy she used to call Boy Blue, — 
And rows of Sarson's Vinegar: that crop 
We harvest sweet all but from babyhood, 
Unmouldered by the many loads on top. 

IX 

Always, from quite a tiny, she was good 
And "gave no trouble," — quiet, timid, humble; 
Minding her dolls, or doing all she could 
"To help Ma" ; crying seldom at a tumble. 
She feared her brothers woefully, aghast 
Alike to see them fight and hear them grumble. 

x 
She had but scanty petting-time, soon past, 
Although the only little maid. Her mould 
Was not the same as that wherein was cast 
The rest of them : her brothers, rough and bold ; 
Her father, quick and sharp and self-reliant ; 
Her mother, big and brusque, inclined to scold. 



CHILDHOOD it 

x I 

She was so soft, so dutiful and pliant ; 
She had no "spirit," as her mother said, 
Who would have relished her at times defiant, 
Self-willed, or saucy — not so lightly led 
And lovesome. In the four-year-old small heart 
Love of her bustling mother lived with dread. 

XII 

She went to school, to learn the early art 
Of making mats of beads and coloured strips 
Of pretty shining paper. At the start 
She was terrified, and made her tiny trips 
Quaking to Miss Delaney's, and in class 
Whispered her two times table with mute lips. 

XIII 
With such a child that stage was slow to pass 
Ere she, though but self-consciously assured, 
Went to school — said her mother — "bold as brass." 
And then that doleful time must be endured 
Of lonely striving with the spelling book, 
In parlour or kitchen mournfully immured : 

XIV 
When the big hope of learning quite forsook 
The little baffled head, and twilight sighed 
Grey on th' impossible page, and tight tears shook 
From eyes repugnant, and the loreless pride 
And glamour of school-books and satchel small 
And having real home lessons wholly died. 

xv 
And now you see her, lingering at all 
Sweet shops and toyshops coming home at noon ; 
And where the rude Free School boys fight and bawl 
(She clashed with them at two) praying the boon 
Of passing unobserved ; and then at four 
Fugitive hopscotch with her toe-worn shoon. 



H MRS TIDMUSS 

XVI 

These little ones ! — thus tiny on the shore 
Of life's far-spread, uncomprehended surges ; 
Great-eyed and finger in mouth at all the roar 
And fact ungraspable ; yet them Time urges, 
Pinafored, piteous, and will not stay, 
And will not spare — e'en now — from the pangs and 
scourges. 

XVII 

AT Miss Delaney's four times every day 
They sat upon the floor to change their shoes. 
Selina's buttonhook had gone astray, 
And a small boy beside her let her use 
His for a kiss in payment, there bestowed. — 
Openly, simply, swiftly childhood woos ! 

XVIII 

And yet — to walk handfast along the road, 
Excel a little when she knew him near, 
Cuddle his memory nightly : therein glowed 
No different ecstasy, nor yet less dear 
Nor less authentic than might them possess 
Cognizably in any elder year. 

XIX 

He came to tea. She wore her new stuff dress. 
She'd been so eager, yet — she scarce knew why — 
The party wasn't love's f oredreamt success : 
Her home, she felt, with his could never vie, 
While he was thinking it more fine than his, 
And both chill cynic Age kept shamed and shy. 

xx 
But there were friends these grown-ups could not quiz,- 
With whom she too in turn unerring traced 
What the primordial way of girlhood is, 
From littlest up to biggest : arms round waist, 
Whispering, secret-telling, secret-showing, 
Fond, fickle, prone to embrace and be embraced. 



CHILDHOOD 15 

x x 1 

She ne'er was one of the assured and knowing 

Five, six-year-old born leaders of a group 

Of other infants. She was towed, ne'er towing, — 

A meek admiring dinghy 'neath the poop 

Of some tall frigate ; though to fact's plain view 

Both little ones might bowl the same-sized hoop. 

XXII 

These years — 'tis commonplace — had soft worn hue, 

But only here and there the fabric kept 

Its intricate pattern, where not perished through, 

Or where the gradual ravelling had not crept 

By broken strands and all of warp and weft 

But sweet dim colour in oblivion slept. 

XXIII 

Such frail remains with the at times too deft 
Needle of memory Selina mended. — 
"Once — I was very young then — I was left 
Outside a shop, and wandered off, and ended 
In getting lost — oh, miles and miles away! 
And a kind lady, very rich befriended 

XXIV 

"The naughty little girl she found astray, 

And took me to her house. She'd lost a daughter 

And cried when Ma came for me." — Or : "One day 

I went with brother Bob — I hadn't oughter — 

Fishing with tadpoles, and fell in, and nigh 

Got drowned : I was three minutes under water." 

XXV 

As meek ones do, she loved to magnify 
To monstrous deeds such mildly ill careers 
As these had truly been ; or else her eye 
Retained them as red spots in after years 
Staring from her grey duteousness of youth 
With her few whippings and perfervid tears. 



16 MRS TIDMUSS 

XXVI 

IN the accustomed plating-bath of Truth, 
God, Jesus, Heav'n, & Love — mixed metal & dross — 
They dipped her. She was rubbed to easy ruth 
For disobedience, greed, and being cross. — 
Morals were Ma's blind tribal law transmitted, 
Religion just their meretricious glos? 

XXVII 

Sunday, Church, Sunday School, with their befitted 
Clean underclothes, best frock, and tightened hair ; 
Shut shops, hushed streets, bells, dinner-smells emitted 
Comfortably upon the Sabbath air : 
These were (to sound mute notes in that small head) 
The shrine of Goodness and oblations there. 

XXVIII 

A Saviour tacked above her iron bed, 
And texts, were all the pictures in her attic, 
Which had besides one chair, a table instead 
Of washstand, and a chest of drawers erratic ; 
Also some drugget. But the room was hers. 
Such sole possession was well-nigh ecstatic. 

XXIX 

SO tne slow pettiness of childhood slurs 
Across life's early pages. What remains 
Rememberable, where nothing that occurs 
Adds one light scruple to the heroic gains 
Of man's existence? Here is but forthshewn 
What in the sum builds up a few gold grains. 

XXX 

Yet 'tis the Argument, that these unknown, 
Unknowing, feeble, ineffectual freight, — 
These, each innumerable seed grain strown 
Of life, ev'n in their unheroic fate, 
Their very plight of spurless littleness, 
Are glorious, heroical, and great. 



CHILDHOOD 17 

XXXI 

Look we then never on one that shares this stress 

Of living, low moss on paths beneath dread feet, 

Except to glorify and pity and bless. — 

For these unblooming is no record meet, 

Who have roots and fibres, grow, endure, and die 

Alike with storied roses royal and sweet? 

XXXII 

MEASLES and mumps and whooping cough went by, 
Perfunctory pale legates of release 
From getting up and school and every tie 
Of trite routine that held the long home peace. 
The doctor sometimes came, and now and then 
Tremendous rustling aunts would awe their niece. 

XXXIII 
She stayed in one such dragoness's lair 
("A breath of country air" was Ma's decree) v 
And once she went with Pa and Bob and Ben 
To the sea-side, by train, and saw the sea, 
And had a spade, and digged. And sometimes too 
They all shut shop and had a day-long spree. 

xxxiv 
Bright flecks like these — the bird-sung morning blue 
'Twixt country curtains, — thrilling hunts for shells — 
Showed where her shuttle thridded through and through, 
Steadily, silently . . . But what impels 
The shuttle, she ne'er wonders ; on what loom 
Scarce asks. Ahead there's Heav'n, she's taught. None 

tells 
What the unknown and immaterial womb. 



THE LIFE & DEATH OF MRS TIDMUSS 
PART II. MAIDENHOOD 

LOOK where she comes! . . . 
Oh, have you seen 
With vision which beatifies yet numbs 
The heart with ache of instant transience — 
Have you seen flowers, 
Ruling their hour of hours, 
Princesses yet, but hence 

More regnant than the most redoubted Queen f 
For lo, they yet are virginal: not yet 
Can they forget 

The little blind-eyed buds they were at play 
Among warm wafts of May, 

Though now they stand so slender-stemmed and straight, 
So confident and fearless, 

In their full-moulded youth to sway their fate. 
Are they not peerless 

Thus, as in innocence and sureness grown 
They bosom to that swift noon 
Where sureness, innocence are blown? 

So she, 

And hers high June . . . 
Ah, though I pester Time 
To bring her quick to be 
Queen of ample turbulent life with me, 
Yet — yet I see 

That peerless in this princess-prime 
She is serenelier sovran. Where is sway 
Like that which strikes from sweet limbs' lissom play, 
From confident eyes — 

Clear mountain tarns where innocence yet lies 
Reflecting far cloud-fleeces of surmise, — 
18 



MAIDENHOOD 19 

Quick colour, the clean spirit hath in gift, 

The brave young breast's quick lift, 

The dappling laughter and the voice that plumbs 

Liquidities of lovely sound, — 

And from the firm small hand that from the ground 

Would boldly grasp, its writhing to caress, 

Life's viper gage? 

— Such is my love. Look where she comes. 

Now at her nonpareil of age, 

The nonpareil of loveliness! 



TH E R E is not one of us whom Time forgets. 
Rather 'tis we unwittingly who lay 
Our wear in cupboards, and this pale moth frets 
Silently at their freshness. On a day, 
Inventorying vesture we have worn, 
We find how finally 'tis put away. 

11 

So with Selina. Life resumes new born 
From childhood's lost lapse into maidenhood. 
Or you may take it there's a page out-torn 
From this poor story, to the reader's good. 
She was a child and is a maid — recalls 
No more herself. Can more be understood ? 

in 

Still with her instinct to go close by walls 
Rather than balance along kerbs, and still 
One of the indistinguishable thralls 
In making — scarce to good, though less to ill: 
Merely to life : even at mad thirteen 
Obeisance was her master, not self-will. 



so MRS TIDMUSS 

IV 

At mad thirteen ! — when hands should not be clean, 
Nor combs required, nor spotless pinnies prized, — 
When children should be heard, yet not unseen, 
Nor chastened, though most frequently chastized, — 
When teachers and mammas should touch despair, 
And God's own image go a deal disguised. 

v 
Do not suppose Selina had an air 
Of being priggish, or was always prim. — 
"The girl's anaemic!" Ma would oft declare, 
And "Mother Seigel's" and maternal vim 
Were both administered, with no avail. 
Simply, she was not born to be a limb. 

VI 

Anaemic, true, she was : plain, peaky, pale ; 
Yet jogged along, — sound, you'd say, in the main ; 
Ran skipping with the rest who without fail 
Would stop, stoop panting — and if one, then twain — 
With hands at frock's hem just above the knee 
To clutch up stockings ever and again. 

VII 

With them she linked, nudged, giggled ; held in fee 

Rather as one who sought the happy sway 

Of doing as others, safe pack-fealty. 

But when they formed close-headed groups to say 

In whispers things illicit being veiled, 

She listened to them dumb, or slipped away. 

VIII 
'Twas from these things, — the half-guessed, half -retailed,- 
Rogue seeds of careful books and folk which fill 
The fallow mind with fruits, — that sex came, jailed 
But grinning uglily behind the grille. 
Nature thus hushed into a thing of shame, 
Inhibited, sets up a furtive still. 



MAIDENHOOD 

IX 

Her bold brisk mother here was lax and lame. 

Felt duty brought her but to blurt abrupt 

Dark scant}* phrases as occasion came — 

Hinting, not telling; tending to corrupt 

Rather than purge inevitable thirst 

With clean cool draught of knowledge crystal cupped. 

x 

Some girls — nor yet the bad ones — were immersed 
In sweethearting, gave kisses to the foe. 
Never Selina. — Long enough she nursed 
Wonder at one grown girl she used to know 
Afar at school, when news came she had married. 
She felt she never, never could do so. 

XI 

AT fourteen school was done with, and she carried 
Her education ballast into life. 
Tight in her mind the twelve-times table tarried 
With all his younger brethren ; she was rife 
With dates and rivers, and could parse and spell, 
And thus was fitted to be woman and wife. 

XII 

So to the fancied freedom we foretell 
In every change. At first 'twas full delight 
Not to sit school-bound, but to help Ma sell 
And Pa pack orders. But she was not bright : 
Slow to pack orders and to say the price — 
No asset to the business in their sight. 

XIII 

And yet she always thought the shop was "nice," — 

Acceptance being her way with all she saw ; 

For discontent was an often-cited vice : 

The mother used her own womb's docile awe 

Ruthlessly, while she scorned it, to compel 

Convenient content with any law. 



22 MRS TIDMUSS 

XIV 
One kind of girl had loved the chinking till, 
Her brothers' breathless dash ("Ten pound o apples!" 
The earthy smell, the mellow golden spill 
From orange boxes, and all glow that dapples 
Dimly from piled fruit-baskets in a gloom 
Rich as the gloom of Medicean chapels. 

xv 
Another would have loathed it like the tomb, 
That half-light, draughty and breathy, and the shop's 
Dank earthy smell that reached to every room, 
And rhubarb stacks, and clammy turnip tops, 
The damp floor grimed with grit, the must of mice, 
Her staggering brothers, and their boots' clop-clops. 

XVI 
But thought-forlorn Selina thought it "nice." — 
It was the shop ; what else, then, should she think ? 
But for the dark, boxed kitchen, where a slice 
Of dripping-toast, ready in half a wink 
And half illicit, ever tempted her 
She'd a true preference which she did not blink. 

XVII 

Here dwelt the drudge, a little mongrel cur 

Who Harriet hight — a cheap-got charity girl. 

She read St. Elmo and The Lamplighter, 

And in her tow-head a continual whirl 

Wantoned, of plush romance, from dawn's chill chores 

To evening's chatter over plain-and-purl. 

XVIII 
She, fiery-fierce herself in rebel wars, 
Divined an alien in the feudal hold, 
Succoured her, healed unfelt incipient sores, 
Gave adoration, and sprang high to enfold 
The colourless little mistress, not with wings 
Of a draggled drudge, but a mother's rose and gold. 



MAIDEN HOOD 23 

x IX 
Hard by the hob, her flushed imaginings 
Beheld tall suitors, dark and debonair. 
Courteous attentions led to diamond rings, 
And orange-blossom bloomed in the kitchen air. 
Selina, listening, thrilled towards the sex 
And wondered, "Might one come — and would she 



XX 

Her mother made unsentimental wrecks 

Of adolescent fancies, lacked 'em through 

And toppled their sweet spars about the decks : 

"Well, no-one's ever going to marry you" — 

Or, "You're a bad debt, certain — booked old maid." 

Then her brisk broadside shrug; why burke what's true? 

XXI 

WHEN she left Sunday School, the curate paid 
A visit to her mother and suggested 
The girl should be confirmed. Her mother played 
Polite procrastination : she protested 
'Leena was young . . . she didn't know . . . she might 
Think of it later . . . And the matter rested. 

XXII 

The curate, at the hint, took easy fright. — 

One mentioned it : a thing one couldn't press : 

Delicate . . . awkward . . . he'd done what was right. 

And Mrs. Simpson called on Heav'n to bless 

The man. — As if it wasn't quite enough 

Going to church regular! All this foolishness! . . . 

XXIII 

Ah, if 'twas God devised our human stuff 

And sphere, He wrought too well : it's made so real 

That He Himself must suffer its rebuff 

Being so less actual. — Thus made, we feel 

This finite fabric of the world's affairs 

So fundamental, He must come to heal. 



24 MRS TIDMUSS 

XXIV 

Therefore Selina says her formal prayers, 
Goes to church, and is good. The shuffle of feet 
Is all she's conscious of, while life prepares 
Its next great act, which from her shilling seat 
She'll hardly see, and never apprehend, 
And at the last go out into the street, 
xxv 

AT the new swimming baths Bob used to attend 
He met a chap — "A fancier all right. 
I bought a cock of his. He said he'd send 
The beggar. — I said, 'Bring it round to-night.' 
— On'y to see my birds, you know. — I mean 
He's not my sort at all — don't seem too bright." 

XXVI 

And so Tom Tidmuss came ; and when they'd been 

To appraise Bob's birds, Ma asked him to their meal. 

Selina then was close upon eighteen — 

Plain and still pale: "the last girl to appeal 

To any chap," said Ben. To her Tom spoke 

But once — at Cribbage, when he said, "Your deal." 

XXVII 

But he came back. Soon no excuse could cloak 

That 'twas Selina's self who drew him there. 

At first the Simpsons took it as a joke, 

While Harriet thrilled and chilled : her debonair 

Dark suitors ! — who approached her darling now ? 

— Bob growled, but made good profit from the affair 

XXVIII 

Mean, graceless wooing ! — Yet I vow, I vow, 
Though 'mid a million others there was naught 
To mark it, — though herself could scarce feel how 
It felt, with self-perception so weak-fraught, 
Yet shall this calico shift of her poor love, 
Like a king's daughter's, be all gold-inwrought. 



MAIDENHOOD 25 

XXIX 

Tom Tidmuss had a mild weak face above 
Loose loutish limbs ; he never dressed up smart. 
Ben urged the fellow ought to get the shove ; 
Bob, bribed with a cockerel, almost took his part; 
The eldest, Bert, engaged to a sidesman's daughter, 
Said the chap went to chapel — a cheerful start ! 

XXX 

And meek Selina? — Why, when Ma's cold water, 
Effectless, turned to real warm reproof, 
Selina startlingly rose up and fought her, 
Though Harriet hitherto had held aloof, 
Lorn of romance. — Yes, of her lone avail 
The colourless flung colour in her woof. 

XXXI 

How did it seem to her ? — Athwart her pale 
Lack-lustre, nigh unloved, intentless life 
Struck the strong glory of the glamoured male — 
Glamoured by her! — began the dear, dread strife, 
Omnipotent, mysterious, wonderful, 
That makes a girl a sweetheart and a wife. 

XXXII 

A sweetheart! — she! Therefore she dares to pull 
'Gainst that mind-bondage of the girl to the mother, — 
Who, half approving her less cotton-wool 
In fibre now, grows lax enough to smother 
Oppugnance (though that chapel stigma frowns) : 
"Well, let her alone. — She'll never get another." 

XXXIII 

THERE stoop still summer evenings upon towns 
Of smoke and ugliness like Willinghame. 
Beauty forgives, enduing from all her gowns 
One of warm air, with unseen sunset flame 
Luminous, all instilled with magic bliss, 
Deep'ning to dove-winged night, still, warm, and tame. 



26 MRS TIDMUSS 

XXXIV 

Holy content awakes well-deep, I wis ; 
Shirt-sleev'd men sit smoking on the street ; 
Tired wives breathe in the balm ; man aches to miss 
One moment of the perfectness, the sweet 
Transient trouble of untroubled good. 
All noise is muted beneath Beauty's feet. 

XXXV 

Upon such scenes — nay, where Selina stood 

'Neath chattering street-lamps, wordless, love-entranced, 

Her face upturned from under its bonnet hood 

Pale to the wind-flung rain which, wintry-lanced, 

Smote cheerless gleams down the chill roadway's dark, 

When few but feet of humble lovers chanced : 

xxxvi 
Ev'n here — not, haply, in Navarre his park, 
Nor more in old Verona — the great King 
Claimed his full homage, set his royal mark. 
Love's tenants hold in chief ; like hearts they bring. 
Selina flames, a peeress in his court — 
The seeming-plain, common anaemic thing. 

XXXVII 

The wooing took on undeclared import 

With Tom's first clumsy kiss, by the parlour fire. 

Then came long walkings-out. Their view was short : 

Not yet to troth-plight ev'n did they aspire; 

They formed no plans, no vows of faith were made, 

Yet now Selina lived one dumb desire. 

XXXVIII 

Time drifted. Tom was in the printing trade 
And earned poor wages. Then, quite unforeseen, 
A job was offered him, much better paid,— 
Compositor and stone-hand on the mean 
Provincial paper in the county town 
Fifteen miles off. Selina was nineteen. 



MAIDEN HOOD 27 

XXXIX 

Speared now green hope and promise through the brown. 

Things inexpressible Tom tried to speak. 

The attempt sufficed : dim castles melted down 

To bright red brick at six-and-six a week. 

He'd saved a bit already — could now save more. 

She had a ring and roses in her cheek. 

XL 

Some social drop the Simpsons might deplore; 

Still Tom was "steady" and "on the Press," 'twas true. 

And now Selina owned a bottom-drawer 

In open glory, and her needle flew, 

Sedulous, as she sewed her secret soul, 

Making new garments for a life made new. 

XLI 

"Dear Leena" sprawled a hard-breathed note, page-whole, 

From him who dissed brevier with clean aplomb, — 

"I hope you're well. I bought a niceish roll 

Of lino. Do for stairs. I bought it from 

That shop in Town End. Which that chair was sold. 

Dear Leena, now no more. Your loving Tom." 

XLII 

And she wrote sometimes too, as the long months rolled 

While he saved slowly, fifteen miles away: 

"Dear Tom, I hope as how you've lost your cold. 

I hope as zue shall see you Saturday. 

Ma says, Not Brass. Your loving Leena. — P. S. 

Bob says as that Black Hamburg hen wont lay." 

X LIII 
Each vile cheap chattel had individual stress 
Of saving, finding, bargaining, — lived dear 
As the ugly, useless, treasured wedding-dress 
Ma had Miss Waters in to make. A year 
Went by, with ever-quickening preparation 
Of learning, making, saving. The time drew near. 



38 MRS TIDMUSS 

XLIV 

THE time drew near. . . . But with what excitation 
Of that slight bosom when a day was named 
That day she went with Tom in pent elation 
To see the little house he'd found ; how flamed 
Her poor imagination standing there, 
I fail to tell — and half would feel ashamed. 

XLV 

Then maidenhood's last days. — Bridget's dark lair, — 
The stuffy, knick-knack-crowded parlour, — yes, 
The smell of the shop, the very turn of the stair 
Which Bob made fearful in her littleness, — 
Pa whistling still, — Ma all but gentle grown, — 
Her brothers ev'n : all these she'd vaguely bless. 

x L VI 
She made that final sacrament, unknown, 
Unknowable, on her small iron bed 
In girlhood's loved, lost chamber, stark alone. 
Life's dreadful rupture broke in tears quick shed. 
There rose a bride from that chill counterpane ; 
The girl who fell there was forever fled. 

XLVII 

Her epithalamium, in such antique strain 

As sang dead brides no worthier but more high, 

Hymns through no cantos. How in their God's brain 

These myriad insignificant signify, 

Each, individually, no poet vents. 

What's one of many ? Pass poor units by ! 

x L VIII 
"Song! made in lieu of many ornaments. 
With which my love should duly have been dect" 
Full tenderly take up thy mean contents. — 
Church-going folk that Sunday never recked 
Whose nuptial rice they trod into the mire — 
The new-made Mrs. Tidmuss' sole effect. 



MAIDEN HOOD 29 

XLIX 

She had no wedding bells. Her well-oiled sire 

Led her in tribal veilings up the aisle 

To where a curate, impatient for his hire, 

Hovered, and Tom in his stiff Sunday style. 

Things went through quick. It mattered not. She moved 

In a mazed phantasmagoria all the while. 

L 

So, through the breakfast, and till it behooved 

That they should start. — "She's only half-alive!" 

Two cousins nudged. Thus the last severance proved 

A numb affair. An uncle was to drive 

The couple home (a market-gardener he). 

She left, 'mid one dim buzz of the old home hive. 

LI 

Dropped at their tiny house, she made the tea, 

And through blurred senses came the slow, strong comb 

Of realization as on Tom's lank knee 

She clung upon his breast. — "This is my home! 

This is my husband !" More and more there lours 

Close dreadful Destiny through deep'ning gloam. 

LII 
"Now bring the Bryde into the brydall boures. 
The night is come." Cry, Juno ! — Mary ! Own 
This votary, some Goddess ! Strew with flowers 
The poor bed — yea, thyself the mystic zone 
Unloose. — Mother, stoop down to this mean child ! 
Life brings her to thee now. Cherish her lone ! 

LIII 

Ah, lente currite, cry! Th' implacable, wild 
Horses o' the night course on their cruel way. 
Life, that with Time is still unreconciled, 
Battles forlorn on this its highest day. 
Noon gains no stay. It passes. The sun sets. 
This is the noon of life. It gains no stay. 
There is not one of us whom Time forgets. 



THE LIFE & DEATH OF MRS TIDMUSS 
PART III. MOTHERHOOD 

ARISE, O loveliest! 
Break the warm toils of consummated sleep! 
Bathe and endue thy limbs 
With dear familiar garments. 
Joy like a swallow skims 
Life's harvest mocking men who reap; 
Yet shall the toilers keep 
The vision and the song 
To cheer the day along: 

Languors must hence, thy spirit be all at leap. 
— O loveliest, arise! 
What shame if sloth re-dims 
The monstrance of thine eyes. 
Which night did mew 
Day-soiled, which now shine new 
After repose as this new day with dew — 
As this unsailed-on day with adventure's hest! 
Come! Ere the birds have done their hymns, 
Arise, O loveliest! 






MOTHERHOOD 31 

1 

DA W N, breaking behind roofs across the street, 
Selina, in her flannel nightgown, saw, 
Lifting the blind. Fleetly she dressed, to greet 
New life with duty, and in the grey and raw 
Went down to work. Routine's old flood o'erwelled 
Swift subsidence of ecstasy and awe. 

1 1 
All her untried experience was knelled 
Like fateless flat rehearsals that first day 
Of lonely self-reliance, though she held 
A bright face up to Tom, who went away 
Happy to his accustomed work; while she 
Wrestled against a rose world's threat'ning grey. 

1 11 
She did her tiny house, then took the key, 
And, tingling-nude as e'er Godiva, scurried 
Along the street to shop, with her old plea 
To pass unnoticed. She was badly worried 
Feeling the bland, brisk butcher had her measure; 
Then, fearful for her dinner, home she hurried. 

IV 

Earth held for her that morning no such treasure 
As wifely craft, in cooking that plain meal ; 
And, Tom safe fed and sped, she found ill leisure 
To plumb responsibility, to feel 
What myriad, life- won, careless gems her Ma, 
That unimagined Inca, must conceal. 

v 

That night as Tom, a placid padishah, 
Sat in the Windsor chair and puffed his pipe, 
She, on the rug, fell sudden a-weeping. — Ah, 
Tom's lost amazement then ! What unknown gripe 
Of strange grief had her ? It was all so good . . . 
It couldn't be those onions with the tripe ? — 



32 MRS TIDMUSS 

VI 

Not hard, but hardish ? . . . Doing what he could, 

He put his big hand on the desolate form 

Bowed to the kitchen fire. He understood 

But dimly; she tried vaguely, when the storm 

Abated, to explain: — those onions . . . all 

The day's chill sneaps on wings new-fledged, nest-warm. 

VII 

So many things were instant to appall 
This captain of a self-manned cockle boat 
Cast loose on the lonely ocean. Fall by fall 
She learned to walk, with none to help or note. 
Tom was not there, and did not understand : 
He could but praise, console, admire, and dote. 

VIII 

Yet, after all, 'twas Love who held her hand 
Over those early days beset with fears, — 
When she was yet close-castled 'gainst the band 
Of neighbours trenched unseen, all eyes and ears 
And trouncing tongues, round her, young neophyte 
Of matronhood, unproven of her peers. 

IX 
Her mother, ne'er so welcome to her sight, 
Came the fourth day to see how matters went. 
Selina, in most shy and shamefast plight, 
Pressed to the bold jet bosom, was content. 
Flatt'ringly esoteric matron-talk 
With mother-care was comfortably blent. 

x 

And so she battled o'er each earliest balk 
Of keeping house, and did not fail her lord. 
She clung on him close on their first Sunday walk, 
Proud that her morning's work had blessed their board 
With his full-feeding tribute (clean shirt-sleev'd 
He'd watched her cook) ; found worthy, she adored. 



MOTHERHOOD 33 

x I 

Acquaintance with her neighbours was achieved, 
And intimacy ev'n with one of them — 
A Mrs. White, snug-windowed and deep-eaved 
With life-experience, buttressed with broad phlegm 
And human tolerance : an old wife, true bred, 
Kindliness her rose-bowering diadem. 

XII 

She made strong mark upon the girl new-wed, — 
Showed masterly, like her mother, and yet kind. 
The one had barren shrewdness of the head ; 
The other, mellower in rougher rind, 
Fruit long-suffused with mingled sun and rain, 
Had wisdom, which is heart and head combined. 

XIII 

THEY only live whose pleasure ends in pain 
(Since there's no stay) , whose both are tides of strife— 
The very rhyme of life, which mourns its slain 
Not in the dead, but in the dead-in-life. 
Abeyance is but in sleep's annihilation. 
Selina must be mother, being wife. 

XIV 
Dawn is one hush of hugest realization 
Ere the great bird-shout paeans the new light, 
Gabriel to sunrise. So the annunciation 
Of Mrs. Tidmuss: wonder, doubt, affright, 
Then fate declared — and she sat still by the fire, 
Her hand fondled and held by Mrs. White. 

xv 
Dimly she saw life's march was swift and dire 
From maidenhood to motherhood : slow spark 
Of consciousness which life's "Aspire! aspire!" 
Blew to distraction, flamed her to her mark, 
Showed her her womanhood — to be life's bride, — 
Upon her breast to see light break from dark. 






34 MRS TIDMUSS 

XVI 
So she, life's child, life's son within her side, 
Bore the long gross mean prelude to grim war, 
Worked, weary and dull, but triumphing in pride 
And duty and glory to be, and bosomed store 
Of strange new love — part plenitude transfused 
Of tender Tom's to her — for the babe she bore. 

XVII 

And if on swamps of sentiment they cruised, 
Miasma-mawkish over "little things," 
Ah, hold these lowly sentient souls excused ! 
Simple and trite old lamps, from which still springs 
The djinn of crude emotion, mock our jeers. — 
New lamps not seldom raise less force of wings. 

XVIII 

The ancient mountain-springs of mirth and tears 
Are primitive, essential, eternal, pure. 
Commerce and cities taint them, and our sneers 
Mock them thus man-debased with sink and sewer. 
Yet they who drink pollution quench a wise 
Plain instinct towards far well-springs that endure. 

XIX 

Compassionate, then, the Tidmusses' soft eyes 
Over the pitiful small garments made 
While flesh and bone were making, — matrix ties 
Loosening, while the busy fingers' aid 
Helped to effect the mystic ties 'twix dam 
And offspring, individual and arrayed. 

XX 

PI T Y it is the poor must buy the sham, 
Not able to afford the only cheap. 
It cost them dear to pay for a mean pram ; 
Yet there were many things which poor folks keep, 
Themselves no longer needing them, to lend. 
Their mutual charity is best and deep. 



MOTHERHOOD 35 

XXI 

So, as the waiting time drew towards its end, 

Selina, though descended out of trade 

To wage-folk status, found each neighbour a friend. 

Happily meek and shy, she ne'er bewrayed 

Superiority's resented gall. 

And Ma was but a distant, fleeting shade. 

XXII 

"Pore thing! — I like 'er. She ain't proud at all" 
(Would say these neighbours) — "don't set up for grand. 
She 'asn't no spirit — not what you would call. 
They say 'er uncle's got a lot of land . . , 
'Er folks is well-to-do in Willing'ame . . . 
'Er mother — don't she dress to beat the band ?" 

XXIII 
The latter felt superior when she came 
To that low neighbourhood. Selina's drop, 
Plain from the "friends" she spoke of, gave her shame. 
She came but seldom — didn't care to stop 
For tea with Tom. Meeting "that Mrs. White," 
She knew the girl possessed her needed prop. 

XXIV 

Oft in this waiting time of weary plight, 

On summer Sundays and late Saturdays, 

Her hand and arm within her Tom's held tight, 

They went slow walks by quiet, back-end ways 

Where town turned country; sometimes without speech, 

Sometimes a-chatter with repetitious phrase. 

XXV 

Never so much the need of each for each 

As now, with life and death come round them near 

From universal vagueness out of reach 

Of private, huddling minds. And now came sheer 

Relentless onslaught, savage woman-war 

Where man's flung neutral, hagged with horror and fear. 



36 MRS TIDMUSS 

XXVI 

But Tom is naught to us: him we ignore. 
And of Selina, how shall man dare speak 
Of that implacable anguish which she bore ? 
The strong-in-life down — smitten deathly weak 
By devastating pain — what wrong has She, 
Man's partner, done, on her such wrath to wreak ? 

XXVII 

The feeblest, lowliest-sentient souls there be, 
Life's walkers-on, called sudden, untaught, and late, 
Must play this lead, perhaps for tragedy — 
Be for the moment whom the world calls great, 
Who, sundered from the inapprehensive mean, 
Feel full and endure the steel'd extremes of fate. 

XXVIII 
And, when the extreme strange cruelty had been, 
Came the intense beatitude, its one 
Palliative. The pain-wrung grip of queen 
And thrall work-roughened it relaxes, none 
That's woman steeps less deeply than another — 
Woman delivered of her first-born son. 

XXIX 
The pain, the blessedness that make a mother 
By awful fusion, whelming her in their 
Profound unfathomable rose to smother 
All other realization : that same stair 
She had climbed, — to view her home, — to her bridal 

night, — 
To childbed now . . . She lay, and took no care. 

XXX 

She saw beyond the bed-foot dawn's chill light 

Samely through her lace curtains cheap and worn. 

But beggared every feeling of such sight 

The feel of the life she had made : a bird-thick morn 

Thrilling: "For unto us, — for unto us 

'A child is born, — a child is born, — is born!" 



MOTHERHOOD 37 

XXXI 

BU T the intenser light which overplus 
Of living gives must dim, lest unmeant strain 
Break the frail filament. The flurry and fuss 
And fierceness passed ; her bed of bliss and pain 
She left and came downstairs — in figure and fact — 
A mother, but a working wife again.- 

XXXII 

A wife — but a mother. Her old anxious act, 
Played lightlier now, was now all newly writ, 
And hard additions had to be attacked. 
There was her part ; she had to strive with it, 
Weak though she was, to satisfy the Unseen 
That in the poring auditorium sit. 

XXXIII 

Her babe, tho', was a stay whereon to lean : 

What if he made the work and weariness, 

Had to be fed so often, kept so clean, 

And cried so much (she could not even dress 

Or hold him, till her neighbours showed her how) ? — 

That work did he not wonderfully bless? 

XXXIV 

Her mother wore an ever bleaker brow 
For Mrs. White, who, when the midwife went, 
Was nurse and housewife too — would not allow 
Selina's hard-won strength to be all spent 
And none put by. When Mrs. Simpson came, 
She was always there. This did Ma much resent. 

xxxv 
There was no vulgar conflict, dame to dame ; 
One was too big, the other far too kind. 
'Twas but, "Well 'Leena's got herself to blame!" 
And Mrs. Simpson, easily resigned : 
Came less and less, and did not vastly care — 
Nor even did Selina deeply mind. 



38 MRS TIDMUSS 

XXXVI 

Of course, the christ'ning function found her there, 
And Mrs. Simpson, and the uncle too — 
Godparents all: a duly fond affair 
Which filled the Tidmuss couple through and through 
With public pride of compassed parenthood 
In that white bundle borne for the whole world's view. 
XXXVII 

Duly they all declared he'd been "so good," 
Taking the ceremonial parlour's tea 
And dedicative cake. Tom Tidmuss stood 
In his best clothes, a blend of nerves and glee 
With Mrs. Simpson's eye on him, and his 
On 'Leena with the baby on her knee. 

XXXVIII 

The last of these primeval ceremonies 

Was when one Sunday they all went by train 

To Willinghame. What pride! What memories ! — 

To show her babe to Harriet, to attain 

Among her brothers some due matron height, 

To ope the drawers of childhood once again ! 

xxxix 
In the train going home to Clent that night 
A lady spoke to her : "Baby looks tired. 
It's late to keep him up. — But what a bright, 
Fine little fellow!" She who thus admired 
To salve reproof ne'er dreamed what time-won weight 
Through the shy wife her idle words acquired. . . . 

XL 

AN D now Selina, scarce released by Fate, 
Was clutched anew, must bear another child. 
Poor girl! although no rebel against her state, 
She for a time with terror was half wild : ■ 
It was so soon ! — she was so weak ! But he 
Must never know. — She sickened and she smiled. . . . 



MOTHERHOOD 39 

XLI 

'Twas touch-and-go. This time Tom had to fee 

A doctor, and the fight was long and grim. — 

"Never again, my man," was his decree, 

Which struck Tom shamed. With struggling words 

and dim 
Devouring eyes he vowed to her no more 
She'd grapple Death to win a child for him. 

x L 11 
Harry could now go crawling on the floor, 
And Tilly was the baby; soon, ah, soon 
His first ridiculous breeches Harry wore, 
And Tilly could start eating with a spoon. 
Weary and long their babyhood, but oh, 
Past babyhood appeared a swift-fled boon! 

XLIII 

Was it indeed but just four years or so 

Since she, a mother thus matured and scarred 

By quick-come summer that spring buds doth blow, 

Was but a girl in soft blind spaces barred ? 

Could she so swiftly stand so firmly rooted 

In life-experience limitless and hard ? 

XLIV 

Like lovely melody of music muted 

The ear heard once and never will again ; 

Like all quick joys light-fingered Time has looted, 

Lost ere the heart can tell they were not pain : 

So backward on her babes' lost babyhood 

Too soon Selina looked and yearned in vain. 

XLV 

And slowly, very slowly understood, 

As that new generation she had made 

Grew, ever grew, the going of hers for good 

Out of the glowing green-and-golden glade 

Of youth to the road of middle-age she saw, 

And shunned the thought. It made her feel afraid. . . . 



4 o MRS TIDMUSS 

XLVI 

O PASSIONLESS, inexorable law 
That draws all men like mackerel in a seine 
From the unborn deeps, not one through any flaw 
Escaping, to those sands where Death has ta'en 
Eternally his catch! The net is wide 
At first, then felt, but flung against in vain. 

XLVII 

Not Alexander, seizing life for bride, 
Escaped foreseeing ultimate divorce — 
To realize that even as all had died 
So too must he, to find his race perforce 
Suddenly now part run. Whom the gods love, 
They only, escape, ending too soon their course, 
x L VIII 

Yet none the less these myriads heave and shove 
Upon the ever-fecund crust of earth, 
Shirking the fated issue, and above 
The petty dead new pettiness has birth. 
Life must be served : the lethe in that stress 
Leaves little thought to feel its little worth. 

XLIX 

And daily as she rose from bed to dress 
One new day deathward, of the myriads more 
Burning life too that moment she'd ne'er guess, 
Nor they of her. That moment in the pour 
Of mid-day sun was toiling in the grain 
Some Indian Selina; some great door, 

L 
That moment hushedly opening on loud strain 
Of dewy bird-song in wide garden, let 
The doctor forth from the long labour-pain 
Of some high lady; after soil and sweat 
That moment, from some man released, there slept 
Some sullen woman ; where the minaret 



MOTHERHOOD 41 

L I 

Speared white and gold with early sunshine stept 
Some peasant from prayer to labour, silent-treading 
Fieldward through Thracian dust that moment ; crept 
To work that moment where tall stacks were spreading 
Grime upon damp and grey some factory hand; 
That moment woke some maiden to her wedding; 

L 1 1 

Some legislator famous in the land, 

At the affairs of Tidmusses all night 

Laborious, climbed wearily his grand 

Wide stairs to bed — that moment, when the slight 

Frail nightgowned figure, rising up to meet 

Old duties with worn courage, saw the white 

Dawn breaking behind roofs across the street. 



THE LIFE & DEATH OF MRS TIDMUSS 
PART IV. MIDDLE AGE 

COOL and serene in her garden, tall and gracious 
and stately, 
She moves full-moulded of life, a lady of midsummer 
lure; 
Not yet betrayed by time, but confronting betrayal most 

greatly, 
A wonderful English lady, calm and pellucid and pure. 

Her poise is the poise of a woman given all honour and 

giving; 
Her bosom is deep and broad as one whereon children have 

lain 
And the beauty whereof is based on the fulness of loving 

and living, 
Learned in labour and love, endurance and glory and pain. 

Nobly, nobly columnar, her neck on that bosom and 

shoulders 
Bears the calm beautiful head, carved by the spirit of life, 
Nothing assertive, yet claiming, unconscious of claim, from 

beholders 
Homage for woman consummate, worship for mother 

and wife. 

Her garments softly about her — graciously, softly, and 
meetly — 

Mark the light hurryless lift of the heart held delicate- 
fast; 

Flow as she moves on the grass, firmly, but sweetly, 
sweetly; 

Caress the caressing rose that is swayed by her swaying 
past. 

42 



MIDDLE AGE 43 

Once were as lambs to her dancing the years, young, play- 
fullest creatures; 

Soon will they track her like wolves, should she fly them 
or falter or fear; 

Now she is walking them tame to the quiet, fine touch of 
her features, 

A wonderful English lady, sure and unshrinking and 
sheer. 



44 MRS TIDMUSS 

i 

HE R years went roaring like a forest fire, 
Still quickening on the rising wind of age, 
Scorching her onward, while from their dead pyre 
Green change renewed the world. As from a cage 
She saw her panorama, prisoned tight 
In the strict world of Tom's precarious wage. 

Safe bolt and bar, whether for beasts that bite 

Or timid creatures but for safety craving, 

That had ne'er failed them yet. Each Friday night 

Tom brought her the week's fruit of steady slaving, 

Seed for her own toil ; and when all was paid — 

Club money and all — not much was left for saving. 

in 

The one gay bit of money that they made 

Was from Tom's hobby, the few fowls he kept 

And bred for points. Real trove (like all eggs laid), 

Sovereigns, no less (for Tom was quite adept), 

Occasional, uncalculated, sweet, 

From local fanciers to their credit leapt. 

IV 

Change, scarce perceptible in her own street, 

In those she lived among — a new child born, 

Another leaving school to bear the heat 

And burden of life's day — was like green corn 

In fields unvisited. To view such scenes 

Or hear their news would harrow her forlorn: 

v 
Her eldest brother now a man or means, 
Wed to his sidesman's daughter : the other two 
Great full-grown men ; a teacher of her 'teens 
Dead ; and the shops, the houses that she knew, 
Yielding their generation's palimpsest 
Like human kind : decaying or seeding new . . . 



MIDDLE AGE 45 

v 1 
And even motherhood lost rapture and zest 
With time, like summer tarnished after June. 
The two between them gave her little rest : 
Harry, who went to school, and Tilly, who soon 
Had friends along the street and played therein 
Fugitive hopscotch with her toe-worn shoon . . . 

VI 1 

WH EN in our children we have seen begin 
Our own past cycle, faster and more fast 
This wheel of our existence seems to spin, 
Centrifugally whirling us aghast 
Out from the nebular vortex, to refind 
The nihilistic or eternal vast. 

VIII 

Being tnus whirled, — feeling this rising wind, — 

Selina, well remembering how slow, 

When her small mind was as her Tilly's mind, 

Each mighty measure of a year did go, 

Saw time thus fleeter than the self-same time 

Vaguely, and vaguely mourned it should be so. 

IX 

Tilly became a logue to run and climb; 

Harry grew big, a mother-loving lad ; 

Her Tom was in what custom called his prime, 

And she was too, — if either ever had 

A state so gallant : folk serenely dressed 

On Sundays are on week days not ill clad. 

x 
They both accepted that which was for best. — 
"Well, we must make the best of it" was oft 
Upon their lips, as though they somehow guessed 
Things were not really so, but up aloft 
Dim jealous God willed them to be so deemed. 
To all their neighbours simply they were soft. 



46 MRS TIDMUSS 

XI 

So in Tom's head no agitation teemed 
Of discontent and strife. He did his work 
Steadily, held the same job down, and seemed 
To mates and masters one who had no quirk 
In his long regular unaltered scroll, — 
One in whom no assertion seemed to lurk. 

XII 

It would have galled full many a wife to thole 
So mild a man ; but in his 'Leena's view 
He was strong, wise, and safe, being in soul 
Her masculine, the stock whereon she grew. 
She wondered much how Mrs. White abode 
Her ostler spouse, who drank, and gambled too. 

XIII 

The plaster-peeling chapel in Smith's Road 

Took Harry and Tilly for Sunday school ; and there 

On Sunday nights the Tidmusses bestowed 

Auxiliary allegiance whensoe'er 

Old Mrs. White could mind the house for them. 

Such the extent of worship for the pair. 

XIV 

As shy as rabbits, — with some native phlegm, 
Yet sensitive as snails, they wished no more. 
The minister might pulpitly condemn 
Such halfway hanging round religion's door, 
Jibbing conformably: in life's long drudge 
Lay ample worship — there they paid full score. 

xv 
With all small ups and downs their ceaseless trudge 
Proceeded by life's byways. Times were harder, 
There was slack work, unrest : Tom did not budge 
And never lost his job — the dread that scarred her 
Insensibly no less through weeks and years, 
Scanning scant savings and insatiate larder. 



MIDDLE AGE 47 

XVI 

Miraculously thin o'er frigid fears 

The ice that myriads must skate, ne'er quit 

A moment's breathing-space, coasting grim weirs 

Of sickness; and miraculous the grit 

They do it with, and more miraculous still 

If none rebelled against the need for it. 

XVII 

Fortuna! should he the winner of bread fall ill! . . . 

Te pauper ambit — thee they yet invoke, 

Ever within thine instant peril till 

The looked-for time when forth the fledgling folk 

May go bread-winning. Towards that time they strain, 

Dogged by the menace of thy dreaded stroke. 

XVIII 

Selina (while her Harry grew amain) 

Was spared fatality. Her thread, it seemed, 

Was spun as she herself was, pale and plain, 

Not fit for stress if not for colour deemed. 

And still — how fast ! how fast ! — the children grew, 

Each childhood phase gone as a dream once dreamed. 

XIX 
Time came when Harry's schooling days were through, 
And Tilly (aged eleven and a Turk) 
Was ripe to help her mother. Tidmuss knew, 
By happy chance (they printed bills for him), 
A builder who agreed to take the lad 
As 'prentice. He was netted with a jerk. 

xx 
Selina felt the sudden epoch sad ; 
But he went off so proud each day at six 
To learn to earn his living like his dad ; 
And soon his talk was all of joists and bricks. 
He was compliant, dutiful, and shy — 
Like her, she knew, — the dearer of her chicks. 



48 MRS T ID MUSS 

XXI 

But Tilly had a brisk, a rebel eye: 

Old Mrs. Simpson was her prototype. — 

Selina knew, and would often sigh 

O'er problems much too hard for her weak gripe 

Concerning one who "ripe to help her mother" 

Seemed for no net, but ambient freedom, ripe. 

XXII 

HARD upon this great change there came another, 
Definitive indeed. — One day at tea 
A wire arrived, sent by her eldest brother, 
To say that Mrs. Simpson suddenly 
Was dead. A stroke, no doubt — a very stroke 
To smite that time-mark, that abiding tree . . . 

XXIII 

Fifteen years gone ! In her old room she woke 
(Bert's wife had put her there: she did not count) 
In her old childhood's bed, among her folk. 
She had mounted those same stairs she used to mount, 
Passing Ma's Room, where lay her mother dead, 
To lie where her bride's tears broke like a fount. 

XXIV 

And Bob was now a big man, bluff and red ; 
And Ben was out in Canada ; and Bert 
Seemed just to be her father now instead 
Of him who once thus nippy and alert 
Was suddenly a thin and weak old man ; 
And she a child dressed in a grown-up skirt. 

XXV 

Brisk Mrs. Simpson had fulfilled her span, 
How could it be? — when 'Leena could so well 
Her gamut of unflagging action scan ! 
Blank in her coffin robed, and with the knell 
Of gravel on the lid, being dead she slew, 
Potent life's fondled permanence to quell. 



MIDDLE AGE 49 

XXVI 

Tom took Selina home, and Pa came too — 

"Gran'pa" henceforward. So it was arranged. 

(Another bed in Harry's room would do.) 

Bert worked the business. Bob, the least estranged, 

Said Tilly must go to him for "a breath of air," 

To their old uncle's place. New folk, — nought changed. 

XXVII 

And now, it seemed, the cupboard was less bare; 
For Gran'pa paid his shot, and still as time 
Went on there came in more from Harry's share. 
With such, indeed, their fortunes often climb 
From this point up to when their fledglings mate 
And leave them — this their economic prime. 

XXVIII 

But Harry had abjured the married state. — 
"I'll stay with 5<ou, Ma. I shan't have a wife." 
(She'd smile, and yet feel foolishly elate.) 
"I'll earn you dresses 'fore you can say 'knife!' " 
Not so young Tilly : she had been to stay 
With her fine Uncle: she had tasted life. 

XXIX 

Old Simpson had been glad to get away 

From Willinghame, Bert's wife to have him go. 

"I miss your Mother, 'Leena," he would say, 

Wistfully querulous. He'd seemed to show 

A choice and leaning to her now saying 

"We are poor things both." And she was proud 'twas so. 

XXX 

About this time the Boer War came braying. 

What did it mean? they meekly passed the hat 

As credit bade, and certainly were paying 

More (as Selina knew) for this and that. 

But wars were grand. They looked on Empire's wheel 

(The outer one) with pride of the hub-bound gnat. 



50 MRS TIDMUSS 

XXXI 

The Old Queen's death was dire ; it had the feel 
Of Judgment Day. What Actor next would shog ? 
Then there was Joe's campaign, which made them reel, 
Round champions wrestling for them in a fog. 
What was tinplate? (Dreadful if it was "gone!") 
Would food cost more? Was Britain in a bog? 

XXXII 
Harry, at any rate, was getting on — 
Out of his time now, bringing home his pay. 
He was to her the very sun that shone. 
Tilly was much too gadabout and gay, 
Selina felt — would try to cope with her, 
Strung up to sharpness. But she got her way. 

XXXIII 

Selina hazarded "service." — Dreadful slur 

Upon their social status, Tilly vowed! 

"Mad ought to have some pride," she would aver. 

"Whatever 'ud Uncle think?" There was a cloud 

Upon her as it was. She wouldn't mind 

Assisting in a shop, — not being proud. 

XXXIV 

And so a shop of eligible kind 

Was found — the best confectioner's in town, — 

Not irksome to the livelily inclined. 

Two more young ladies, each with ponderous crown 

Of complex hair, became her lofty friends: 

And cakes tempt men-folk too. She settled down. 

xxxv 

AR I V E R that from reach to reach extends 
With scarce a murmur between weir and weir 
Yet sometime its own quietude transcends, 
Moving without reminder to the ear 
To say the unceasing waters of the hills 
Are making seaward, nearer and more near. 



MIDDLE AGE 51 

XXXVI 

So for a time intenser quiet fills 

The life of Mrs. Tidmuss: all the stress 

Of her large little battles, frets, and ills 

Lies in abeyance. Toil seems somehow less, 

And money not so tight — how much that means 

To folk who date a lustrum by a dress! 

XXXVII 

And yet behind there's always other scenes 
Preparing while you wait, until the last. 
Abeyance is all illusion. With their teens 
Turned to their twenties both her chicks were fast 
Moving her towards new phases. Marriage next. — 
That thought, dim-forming, found her quite aghast. 

XXXVIII 

Tilly, of course, still worried her and vext, 

Being so free and fractious, never sure 

To come home prompt (and always a pretext). 

But Harry! She, so fearful of a lure, 

Could feel none yet, yet feared it all the more. 

The day must come when he would be a wooer. 

xxxix 
With him, whom more than Tom her life was for, 
That he should turn to another was her dread. 
All her anxiety on Tilly's score 
Was lest she met catastrophe. To wed 
A "nice young fellow" (Tom-like, good, and steady) — 
That proper path she'd gladly see her tread. 

XL 

In point of fact, her brother seemed a Neddy 
To Tilly and her friends. — Girls had no use 
For chaps like him : they like the sort that's ready 
To make acquaintance on the least excuse, 
And carry on, and chuck their money about, 
And never seem to entreat a sexual truce. 



52 MRS TIDMUSS 

XLI 

Quoth Mrs. White, "The less you lets her out, 
The more she'll go, Selina — jest to snap 
Her fingers at 5'ou. Make her fume and pout, 
And she'll go running off with some young chap 
Simply to spite you. That's what young girls are. 
There's no reel 'arm in Tilly — not a scrap." 

XLII 

Wise words, perhaps. And yet they seemed to jar 

The careful little rabbit-mother's mind. 

And Mr. White rose mightily to mar 

The old dame's pleading: laxity might bind 

Tilly to such a man. . . Or then again 

Had strictness driven Mrs. White to him blind? 

X LI II 

And so she worried, till, with many a swain 
Dangled and dreaded, Tilly jumped at last. — 
"I've got engaged to Bert, Ma," put it plain: 
Bert Summers, who in 'Leena's mind was classed 
With most young men in these bad latter days — 
Was smart and spurious, much too smart, and fast. 

XLI v 
She saw him lurid in the unholy blaze 
Of motor engineering; he had just 
Set up a small garage, went violent ways 
On motor cycles; and she didn't trust 
The affluence one must needs infer from them. 
But Tilly meant to have him, so she must. 

XLV 

Mothers who with pale reticence condemn 

These roseate swains it doth no whit bestead. 

The fashionable hour of 2 p.m. 

One swift-come day saw wilful Tilly wed. 

Selina hoped that all was for the best. — 

A boisterous wedding: not like hers, she said. 



MIDDLE AGE 53 

X L VI 

Never as hers had been, she surely guessed, 
Could be the emotions at her marriage tide 
Contained in Tilly's self-sufficient breast. 
And yet — and yet, the most assured young bride 
Surely (she worried, torn for Tilly's sake) 
Must feel forlorn, no mother at her side? 

x L VI 1 
Tilly, however, never meant to make 
One signal of such need. She lived aloof. 
She meant to achieve — and did — a social break 
From her own folk. Selina felt reproof 
Of all she was and aught she tried to do 
Whene'er she came beneath her daughter's roof. 

x L VIII 
Now more and more 'twas Harry on whom she threw 
The clinging arms of service. He was now 
A man matured, — dullish to alien view, — 
But dumbly dutiful. And he'd allow 
His mother to take his arm along the street 
(At least at night). He needed her somehow. 

XLIX 

But then, with her first grandchild, came discreet 
Revenge to Mrs. Tidmuss. Kindly fate 
Had made her needed now, and gave all sweet 
Memories of first motherhood life elate ; 
For Tilly's mother-in-law was out of it, 
Being duly loathed, whate'er her social state. 

L 

Tilly would vow she wasn't one to sit 

Cooped up with Baby. In business, truth to say 

She was Bert's active standby — she could fit 

A tyre on ; but she liked to get away 

On sidecar jaunts; so now she didn't mind 

Seeing her mother almost every day. 



54 MRS TIDMUSS 

LI 

AN D their and all men's worlds were moving blind 
Athwart the sudden comet's course. . . They woke 
(For no less sudden it was) one day to find — 
Dazedly, bewilderedly with all mere folk 
Named citizens who know no citizenship — 
War hurled on hordes who did him ne'er invoke. 

LII 

All quiet streams of life were o'er the lip 

Instantly of Niagara ; the boil 

Of spume-mad dissolution burst the grip 

Of human atoms on slow effluent toil ; 

Chaos has come. And yet, so dazed they were, 

They sought to "carry on" amid the coil. 

LIII 

Not for some time did it at all occur 

To Harry that the call had come to him. 

And then he worried, gloomed ; while still for her, 

His mother, was that yet unreft home rim 

'Twixt realization of the worst that war 

Could mean. At last the home-stroke smote her grim. 

LIV 
For someone spoke to Harry, pushed the door 
That stood ajar. He drew a sudden breath 
And blunderingly went through. But when Fact tore 
Thus through life's dream, & Life stood stark with Death, 
What anguish squeezed Selina's fibres then 
The God of little people witnesseth. 

l v 
So Harry went, like other lads and men 
Along the street. Custom, the node of all, 
Brought equilibrium back to her again. 
A common ill splits comfortably small 
On single sufferers ; and this eased her too 
Of conspicuity, ever sure to appall. 



MIDDLE AGE 55 

L VI 

And so, like nearly all the street, she flew 

Her signal, bantam-proud among the rest: 

Those cards in terrace windows, red, white, and blue, 

Respectability's new-written test : 

"This house has sent a man to fight for King 

And Country" — caste mark salving the dire hest! . . . 

l v 1 1 
As when a poet starts anew to sing 
And fears destude will let him soar 
No better than a bird with broken wing, 
Whereas to wider planes he leaps the more 
By new experience : so she too found 
Her life not maimed but larger than of yore. 

L v 1 1 1 
She lived with Harry on the training ground : 
His life was hers: she tracked him through the rout 
Of all strange ways and talk. The sane home-round 
Was rock foundation yet, though all about 
Its walls were down. So this faith ever shone: 
The War would end before they sent him out. . . . 

LIX 

AN D when he sailed, she knew that he was gone. . . . 
. She knew that he was gone before he died. 
Her life was over, but must be lived on. 
Ah, had it been but ended by the bride 
She looked would slay it! This her retribution! 
Life went, it seemed, that only time she cried 

LX 

Alone with Mrs. White. Dead revolution 

Of daily deeds and needs ne'er ceased to borrow 

Abominable breath from destitution. 

Life gave no sanctity even to sorrow 

For murdered life. That telegram to-day: 

A face to brave the grocer with to-morrow. 



56 MRS TIDMUSS 

LXI 

She had not buried him : grief got no sway 

From funeral grandeur, Sunday-visited grave. 

He had but gone irrevocably away. 

It was one thing to be Life's patient slave ; 

But to what end? — oh, now, to what good end? 

Nothingness ! Could she see 'twas hers to save — 

LXII 

Hers and a million such — to save and mend 
The broken franchise of a frightened world 
For mothers and sons unborn, till life transcend 
The claim of this barbaric blood-call skirled, 
Nor ever woman fashion for brute wreck 
The unborn miracle 'neath her bosom curled? 

LXI II 

She saw the coralline fingers, dimpled neck, 

And lovely little body: her creation 

Cut short, annulled — and yet no change or check 

In all life's hate and greed and desecration. 

The world went on : the markets bought and sold. 

His death had bought no splendid consummation. 

LXI v 

The story of man is old, so very old, 

How can we tell if he but a tide, 

Rising and falling, ne'er to keep its hold; 

Or a still stalagmite which, though it hide 

All present growth, yet grows till, aeons hence, 

With its life-yielding pendant unified ! 

LXV 

HE R father died ; but all her sharpest sense 
Of death had died with Harry. Tilly bore 
A son, her grandson ; but all life intense 
Had lived with only Harry. Neighbour lore 
Now had it, "Mrs. Tidmuss — ah, she's failing." 
And yet she was, in fact, but fifty-four. 



MIDDLE AGE 57 

LX V I 

She was not — never had been — one for ailing; 
But she grew weaker, smaller, and (though made 
Of unmixt meekness) got a quirk of railing — 
A piteous-petty shrew: her mind was frayed 
Ever by Bert, her son-in-law, since he 
(And Harry killed!) clung crafty to his trade. 

LX VI 1 

And now the mean mute walls which Tom and she 
Had storied with their lives held once again 
Only the bride and bridegroom. Tom must dree, 
As in young manhood, so in his life's wane, 
Still the week's toil to win the weekly hire 
And still for her, although such haste were vain, 
Her years went roaring like a forest fire. 



THE LIFE AND DEATH OF MRS TIDMUSS 
PART V. OLD AGE 

WE bring a Queen to most high funeral. 
Shout, mortals, and toss roses on the pall! 
Death sets free: it is Life that holds in thrall. 

Life is the prisoning clay, and Death the sun; 
Life the vague night, and Death broad day begun; 
Life the gaunt trenches, Death the dim peace won. 

To whoso fought, Death gives triumphant peace; 
Whoso resisted bonds, Death brings release; 
Whoso was sown, himself is God's increase. 

Blow up, O trumpets of eternity! 

Shout, souls of God, from starry sea to sea! 

Start, clash your shining shields! — a soul is free! 

Spoil all the suns to lay her pathway down! 
Undight the deeps of colour for her gown! 
Weld the white lakes of blisses for her crown! 

Most powerful, pitiful flesh, how low thou liest! 
Crumble, O earth, 'tis only thou that diest! 
Comes glory unto Glory in the Highest! 



OLD AGE 59 

i 

LIFE'S curtain falls, and all the tale is told. 
But dull the last act often seems and long, 
So that men find it weariful to behold, 
Tired of the palsied actors, thinking wrong 
The author, who has nought for them to do 
And should have closed their parts in action strong. 

II 

What use, what beauty was there in these two? — 
Tom, lank and bent of back, slow and few-spoken, 
Trusty to get the weekly paper through, 
And she, whose love by his love was awoken 
To be his mate years hence, now yet his mate 
By all those many years used up and broken? 

ill 
Habitual use and beauty of no date 
Might be in each for the other. But suppose 
Her use to him made him fulfil his fate 
Of labouring for his masters? When he goes 
How would it hurt humanity even to see 
That useless, petty, unbeauteous business close? 

IV 

We spend our lives, in large or small degree, 

In sorry service which the soul denies. 

The whole world's bondage keeps us each unfree, 

Unless the Law be given in this wise 

That selfless toil, at how so soulless trade, 

God's benediction and assoilment buys. 

v 
Else are God and God's soul in us bewrayed ; 
For all the Law is — love, and, loving, give; 
And priests and kings and prostitutes are paid, 
Because they have to live, they have to live. 
Riddle all trades, what one declines the meshes 
Of man's God-banning economic sieve? 



60 MRS TIDMUSS 

VI 

We do not know whether so strong the flesh is 

Or strong the soul, to be so long a-dying. 

Dying to self, is't the caged soul that threshes ? 

This desolate denying and denying 

Of all our being: the endless doubting-fit 

If self is soul, and which in bonds we are trying: 

VII 

Is this to save the soul by losing it? 

One may obey, yet evermore rebel ; 

Do right, and yet be wretched ; may submit, 

Yet whether to God or Mammon fail to tell. 

Oh, thus to pin us puzzling down in life, 

Can God be good and just to invent such hell ? 

VIII 
Nor Tom nor 'Leena ever knew that strife. 
Duty lay plain: his was to fend for her, 
Hers to be all, all that is meant by wife, 
As simply as with lives of feather and fur. 
Duty was instinct : no grand-reasoned pall 
On coffin of a casuist's demur. 

IX 

So may it be — oh, may it ? — the only all 
Required (yet "only all": O mighty task!) 
Is to achieve the casual state and small 
Of making bricks in Egypt? May God ask 
Simply the petty kindness, petty love, 
Nor in high plans of exodus to bask? 

x 

So, He would rank these Tidmusses above 

Poets and priests ; and so, we too may call them 

Happier in life than life's elect who shove 

Such millions to the gutter, rob them, maul them. 

In all the footpad purple of civilization, — 

Better than fools who'd free or fools that thrall them. 



OLD AGE 61 

XI 

IN the grey evening of domestication 
Selina now must trudge, and fare alone 
Except for Tilly, who in domination 
Succeeded to old Mrs. Simpson's throne. 
She bullied and bustled every time she came, 
"For Ma's good." — No mere tenderesses must be shown 1 

XI I 

And Tom came home to supper just the same, 
Tended his birds, and told the small day's news ; 
While she would sit, a shrunken little dame, 
When all "the work" was done, and ever use 
The dregs of twilight, not to waste the gas, 
Doing the darning, falling into muse. 

XIII 

Tilly's Rosina was a merry lass 

Now eight years old, and little Bob was three. 

Few childhood's memories could she amass, 

But such she'd tell them when they came to tea; 

Yet ev'n with them she brooked the anxious fear 

That they might be less entertained than she. 

xiv 
"Your great gran'ma 'ud give me pennies, dear, 
To buy the Sally Lunns across the way. 
I never crossed without the road was clear." 
(There were no Motors then) . . . Or else: "One day 
Bobbie's great uncle Robert took me out 
Fishing; and I fell in. Yes, I dessay 

xv 

I was a good five minutes, or thereabout 
Under the water. All my past life went 
Before me — like a flash. Ah ! there's no doubt 
It was a judgement on me. I was sent 
To bed, of course — I hadn't oughter go 
Fishing like that." Such broideries Time lent! 



62 MRS TIDMUSS 



HO W Time does fly!" she'd say, yet never know 
How to anticipate one shock of change 
From the unchanging present. The to-and-fro 
Of Tom 'twixt home works had steady range 
Of nigh on forty years ; and then one day 
Ceased suddenly. In the retrospect how strange! 

XVII 

He caught a chill, and 'Leena made him stay 
Fevered and shivering by the kitchen fire. 
(He scarce knew what it was to keep away 
From the week's labour earning the week's hire.) 
Then he got worse : she made him go to bed. 
The doctor came : she knew things were dire. 

XVIII 

He came at night: "as bad as that," she said, 
Anxious, important, but three-quarters blind. 
Then two days afterwards, her Tom was dead. 
In all the world and Time she could not find 
Her fellow-farer through the world and Time 
Evermore. He had gone. And she was left behind. 

XIX 

God stopped at neither cruelty nor crime, 
Taking him from her suddenly like this, 
She might have felt ; and seen herself His mime, 
Her lips trembling to press their unmet kiss 
On the blank face that could not say farewell ; 
And might have called on all the heavens to hiss. 

xx 

What! could not time go back, — could not this knell 
Its pulse throbbed once upon the air efface, 
Just for so long that each to each might tell 
What each to each had been, together trace 
Their leal life-journey, and thus bravely meet 
Its end, taking their conscious last embrace? 



OLD AGE 63 

XXI 

Down the strait stair, dirged by the clumping feet, — 

Never again her fellow in that bed, — 

Enthralling each thronged doorstep down the street, — 

Laid at the last where bitter clay was spread 

To mock the new-come clay that late was man : 

He went, and left her lonelier than her dead. 

XXII 

How little in the total could she scan 

Of all his life — his doings and his feelings — 

Close howsoever with her own it ran! 

Mates, never met before, who had shared his dealings 

With work-day life, had news for her — for her! 

He had lived and died so barren of self-revealings. 

XXIII 

Memories and such thoughts she had for myrrh. 

And now the Tidmuss history became 

To that small tenement in time a blur, 

In time a blank. She had with ache and shame 

To sell the bits of sticks and Tom's loved birds; 

Then left her home to folk of some new name. 

XXIV 

DEAR are the homes whereof each wall engirds 
Long vanished lives, ghost upon ghost of folk, 
Fragmented loves and labours, buried sherds. 
Strangers we enter, then ourselves evoke 
Familiar echoes, till, if such time come, 
How the heart aches when our own bond is broke! 

xxv 

And how the heart aches or is anguish-numb 

At parting with the cherished household gear 

We have clogged our lives with, — saving here a crumb 

Of consolation from the auctioneer, 

And parting there with ugly treasures lacking 

Any use but memory's which makes them dear. 



64 MRS TIDMUSS 

XXVI 

Tilly's was the insistent force attacking 

Scruples tenacious yearning and regret. 

Doing her callous best to send them packing. 

She let her mother keep the bedroom set, 

But stopped at that. — "You don't want all this now. 

Sell the old stuff for just what you can get." 

XXVII 

What could meek 'Leena do but meekly bow 

As to a mother's fiat. Tilly was master. 

A pitiless tempest — she could ill say how — 

Had swiftly smitten her grey sea-plains and cast her 

On to a bare inhospitable coast, 

A destitute sole foundling of disaster. 

XXVIII 

For now her son-in-law must be her host, 
And she in charity must eat his bread 
Who in the hurt brain ever raised the ghost 
Of Harry, as if his blood was on Bert's head. 
She knew that Tilly did not want her there ; 
But Tilly "knew her duty" — so she said. 

XXIX 

Selina would have less misliked to fare 

Back with her bluff old red-faced brother Bob. 

But ... he was kind . . . yet hadn't seemed to care 

To have her. He was one of that sleek mob 

Into whose mouths like manna War thrust money. 

He'd bought a Ford from Bert, but liked his cob. 

XXX 

HO W live the bees unless to toil for honey, 
Or take their winter ease on spoil well won 
When bloom was petalled full and days were sunny? 
The bees die quickly, their last flight i' the sun 
Quenched as they work ; the young queen comes to slay 
The old unfruitful queen whose day is done. 



OLD AGE 65 

XXXI 

Selina's fruits were service. Now her day 
Seemed done ; but she must live, devoid of use, 
Feeling herself "a burden," "in the way," — 
Feeling downright insufterance and abuse 
Massing their guns, did she but overstrain 
Conventionality's precarious truce. 

XXXII 

Painfully lingering, snows of winter pain 
The forthright winter-fated summer weather. 
Eld's ways and thoughts and influence are bane. 
Each generation fronts the other's tether 
And chews provocative its mental cud. 
Crabb'd age and youth can never live together. 

XXXIII 
Selina lurked, a canker in the bud 
Of Tilly's social bloom ; or kept in shade 
As one that had brought shame upon the blood. 
Tilly had gained anew the caste of Trade, 
Nay, more, of Engineering. In her mind 
Her mother was a slur that might degrade. 

XXXIV 
And yet Selina ne'er was slow to find 
Reasons which showed that towards the hen that hatched 

her 
This cygnet was quite adequately kind. 
She was so quick : poor foolish people f ratched her. 
So businesslike: her Gran'ma was just so. 
Heartless? — she hid the feelings that attached her. 

xxxv 
Thus till Time wreak the timeless overthrow 
Of all Illusion, mothers will not cease 
To gild the rust and flaws their children show. 
If 'tis not so, not Death that brings release 
From all the strife and wounds and tiredness — 
Not even Death can close their eyes in peace. 



66 MRS T ID MUSS. 

XXXVI 

No need was hers for schooling to repress, 

To be retired, and still to wear old bones 

In grudged help scarce acknowledged. Yet no less 

She never learnt to speak in easy tones 

Of friendliness to Bert; at him she threw 

All that her bosom held of bitter stones. 

XXXVII 

ON E day, when Autumn in defiance flew 
Its battlements with crowded blazoned flags 
Against its fall, she wearied, walking through 
The tramp-besmutted park. One of those hags 
Came wheedling where she sat : a gangrel creature 
That once was woman, now a crone in rags. . . . 

XXXVIII 

And she, Selina, knew her ! — though each feature 
Was battered on life's flints from fall to fall. 
The drudge, her friend! Harriet! Could she reach her 
Through diffidence, time, and horror — a triple wall ? . . 
"I have no money!" she gasped. (And it was true.) 
Then tried . . . but Harriet passed. And that was all. 

XXXIX 

The shock that it had been she only knew. 
She trod the path of Death with conscious feet 
Thereafter. "Harriet! What have they done to you ? 
How could we meet like this, how could we meet 
That dreadful moment? — And all those dreadful years 
I don't know nothing of !" So her heart beat. 

x L 

And Tilly was half ashamed of evil fears 
That her old mother might attain great age, 
When, even then, the subsidence of piers 
Long time invisible reached its last swift stage, 
And the long landmark of a human fane 
Ruined to earth. The heart gave back life's gage- 



OLD A GE 67 

XLI 

It had been always weak. They thought her brain 

Wandering at the last. — "But what a bright 

Fine little fellow!" the lady in the train 

She said to me. . . . She gave me such a fright: 

I alius was shy: I wanted to, I'm shore. 

No money!" The heart ceased, and all the fight. 

x LII 
yiN D it was finished. Sixty-two years, no more, 
,/YThe period of her pilgrimage had been 
From the one door unto the other door, 
From darkness unto darkness. She was seen, 
Remembered, of none, but few of her own kind — 
God's most glorious ones, man's myriad mean. 

X LIII 

Old Mrs. White, past eighty and half blind, 

Remembered her, and sorrowed for a day. 

The specious hearse proclaimed her to the mind 

Momently : here a man broke off to say, 

"That's the third funeral I've seen this week." 

And then resumed: "Yes — Oils are the things that pay." 

XLIV 

And God? — "God" — the glib little word we speak 

Assumptively, because when all is said 

The assumption's made, whether with tongue in cheek, 

Or ear to instinct, or no thought in head 

Because thought dies in pecking at the shell. 

Break but the shell alive the instant dead ? 

XLV 

Whatever death may be, account it well. 

If Mrs. Tidmuss died as flower and tree 

And is no more, or if her spirit dwell 

In unimaginable ecstasy 

Within the lovely bosom of this God, 

Lives now enlightened, learns and serves, — let be! 



63 MRS TIDMUSS 

XLVI 

The unchosen road submissively she trod: 

Strove to discern it, such as were her light, 

Strove to endure it, such as she were shod. 

But if this immortality requites 

Her spirit now, then surely such a song 

As shook the spheres hailed her poor funeral rites. 

XL VII 

Through ugly streets jogged the cortege along. 
(We bring a Queen to most high funeral!) 
Folk went their ways ; there was no gathered throng. 
(Shout, mortals, and toss roses on the pall!) 
The sun shone, and the morn was crisp and gay. 
(Death sets free: it is the life that holds in thrall.) 

X L VIII 

She passed the shops she bought at every day ; 

(Life is the prisoning clay, and Death the sun;) 

She passed the turn towards where her old street lay; 

(Life the strange night, and Death the broad day begun;) 

She passed the peeling chapel in Pond's Road. 

(Life the gaunt trenches, Death the dim peace won.) 

XLIX 

The hearse approached her body's last abode ; 
(To whoso fought, Death gives triumphant peace;) 
The pace was slackened to the formal mode; 
(Whoso resisted bonds, Death brings release;) 
Impatient stood the curate, new to Clent. 
(Whoso was sown, himself is God's increase.) 

h 

Tilly displayed the proper grief she meant; 

(Blow up, O trumpets of eternity!) 

Bert Summers thought, "Well, it was time she went." 

(Shout, souls of God, from starry sea to sea!) 

The children were behaving very well. 

(Stars, clash your shining shields! — a soul is free!) 



OLD AGE 69 

LI 

"... Short time to live." It knocked indeed a knell. 
(Spoil all the suns to lay her pathway down!) 
The black men shuffled as they raised the shell. 
(XJndight the deeps of colour for her gown!) 
The cheap scant wreaths lay on the ground aside. 
{Weld the white lakes of blisses for her crown!) 

LII 

"Dust to dust" — and now Tilly really cried. 
(Most powerful, pitiful flesh, how low thou liest!) 
We were but earth, and earth was all our pride. 
(Crumble, O earth, 'tis only thou that diest!) 
There was a little rattle of gravelly mould. . . . 
(Come glory unto God in the Highest!) 
Life's curtain falls, and all the tale is told. 

M 



INTERESTING NEW VERSE 

GOING-TO-THE-SUN 

By VACHEL LINDSAY 

Vigorous, imaginative verse, with touches of fantasy 
and of humor, inspired by Lindsay's walking trip in 
the Rockies, combined with a new aspect of his genius 
in the form of delightful illustrations. 

NARRATIVES IN VERSE 

By RUTH COMFORT MITCHELL 

A collection of this popular writer's verses, some 
dramatic, some lyric, but all marked by delightful quali- 
ties of poetic melody and rhythm, and by a fresh vigor 
of thought and strong human appeal. 

OXFORD POETRY, 1921 
OXFORD POETRY, 1922 

The best verse produced during the years indicated by 
undergraduates at Oxford University, where many of 
the finest and most promising young men of England 
write in a variety of forms and moods. 

VERSE OF OUR DAY 

Compiled by MARGERY GORDON and MARIE B. 
KING 
A comprehensive and attractive anthology, including 
some of the finest work of British and American poets 
representative of present times. Contains excellent ma- 
terial for study as well as ordinary reading. 

THE GOTHIC ROSE 

By WILFRID R. CHILDE 

Verses by a modern English writer with a strong 
classical trend and rare sense of colorful beauty and 
delicate emotion, a true artist with a mastery of fine 
style. 

A CHILD'S GARDEN OF VERSE 

By ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON 

An engaging novelty. These famous poems of child- 
hood ingeniously turned into Latin verse. The spirit of 
Stevenson in the form of Horace. English and Latin 
versions are printed on opposite pages. 

D. APPLETON AND COMPANY 
New York London 



APPLETON LIBRARY OF VERSE 



These attractive books, uniformly bound in flexible 
binding, form a very distinctive group of volumes of 
some of the best-known verse of the day. The authors 
represented are among the poets and poetesses of 
widest recognition and popularity. The set covers a 
broad range of types of verse and moods. Other vol- 
umes will be added to The Appleton Library of Verse 
from time to time. 

NARRATIVES IN VERSE 

By RUTH COMFORT MITCHELL 

NOAH AN' JONAH AN' CAP'N JOHN 

SMITH By DON MARQUIS 

THE WIND IN THE CORN 

By EDITH FRANKLIN WYATT 

CAPE COD BALLADS 

By JOSEPH C. LINCOLN 

SONGS OF THE STALWART 

By GRANTLAND RICE 

FROM THE FRONT 

By C. E. ANDREWS 

SONGS IN THE COMMON CHORD 

By AMELIA E. BARR 

A HARVEST OF GERMAN VERSE 

By MARGARETE MfJNSTERBERG 

SONGS OF THE SOIL 

By FRANK L. STANTON 



D. APPLETON AND COMPANY 
New York London 






Deacidified using the Bookkeeper process. 
Neutralizing agent: Magnesium Oxide 
Treatment Date: May 2009 

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